This invention relates to the art of exercising and, more particularly, to exercising devices removably mountable on the foot rests of a wheelchair to enable the exercising of the arms and/or legs of a person sitting in the wheelchair.
Manually operated and motorized exercising devices have been provided heretofore for facilitating helpful exercise and therapeutic treatment for promoting the health and rehabilitation of persons having different degrees of disabilities due to, for example, injury, strokes, arthritis, chronic pain, knee or hip replacement surgery and the like. In these and other situations, there is a need to exercise a person's unused or under used muscles or limbs to avoid stiffened joints and tendons, and atrophy of the person's muscles. Many persons suffering from the foregoing and other disabilities are either temporarily or permanently confined to a wheelchair, whereby access to standard exercising devices, even in a rehabilitation center, is difficult and sometimes impossible. While exercising devices have been provided heretofore for use by a person seated in a wheelchair, such as shown for example in U.S. Pat. No. 4,883,268 to Salkind, U.S. Pat. No. 5,048,827 to Caruso and U.S. Pat. No. 5,284,131 to Gray, the devices are floor supported. Accordingly, it is necessary to move one or the other of the exercising device and wheelchair to a given location and then into the use position with respect to the exercising device, and the wheelchair and exercising device must remain in that position and location during the exercising session. Moreover, the exercising devices are quite large, structurally, and cumbersome to handle and, for the most part, require a considerable amount of space for storage. Because the exercising device is floor supported, a certain amount of time is required to maneuver the chair and exercising device into the use position and, additionally, the size and/or structure of the exercising device must be such as to provide stability thereof against displacement relative to the wheelchair in response to the exerciser's operation of the device.